PENSACOLA, Florida -- Fifty-six seventh grade students from Elberta Middle School joined approximately 300 other guests for the National Naval Aviation Museum's World War II Remembrance event Friday in Pensacola.

For the students, the event served as a history lesson. For the five Pearl Harbor survivors present, it was a day to remember and tell the younger generations where they were 72 years ago, the day the world changed.

"I was so glad to see so many young children here today," said Jay Carraway, a U.S. Navy vet who returned fire at Japanese planes during the attack on Pearl Harbor. "There are too many schools that don't teach the history of Pearl Harbor and what happened there and I think they found out a little about it today."

Carraway was eating breakfast on the USS Hulburt, a Clemson-class destroyer when the attack began. Even after the first bombs went off, most did not realize that the base was under attack.

"Like everybody else, at first we said 'we don't drill on Sunday mornings,' but that was no drill," Carraway said. "A bomb finally hit close by and rocked the ship, and we realized then that something was going on."

Carraway manned the ship's aft 5-inch gun and fired at the Japanese bombers.

"The torpedo planes came out from about 150 feet across our stern, it felt like they were so close you could touch them," he said.

Bill Braddock, another Pearl Harbor veteran at the event, was on Ford Island, getting ready to start his 0800 guard shift when vibrations from the explosions knocked his morning coffee off a table.

"We thought it must be some young lieutenant or ensign had crashed his plane, or a bomb fell off or something," Braddock said. "We jumped up and ran outside and it was nothing but jet planes everywhere."

Braddock said one of the enemy pilots flew so close to him that he could see the pilot grin before dropping a torpedo that Braddock believes hit the USS Oklahoma, one of four U.S. Navy battleships sunk during the attack.

After the program Friday, the students lined up to shake hands and greet the five Pearl Harbor veterans and other servicemen and women gathered for the event.

"My hand is a little sore (from shaking hands with so many people)," Carraway said after the event. "But it's always a pleasure and I like talking to people about the war and Pearl Harbor."

It's an experience that the Elberta students may never have had if not for the government shutdown earlier this year. Their field trip to the museum was originally slated for October, but had to rescheduled when the museum closed due to the shutdown.

Career tech teacher DeMoi Crawford said she put her students through a crash course on World War II when the museum told her just a few days ago that their field trip would include the remembrance event.

During the remembrance, Jack C. Taylor, a former Naval aviator and founder of Enterprise Rent-A-Car, presented a restored F6F-3 Hellcat plane to the museum. Taylor flew the Hellcats during the war from the USS Enterprise and later named his company after the ship on which he served.

The Tate High School band and jazz ensemble performed music from the 1940s, including "I'll Be Home for Christmas," and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," as emcee Bob Pisz narrated a timeline of events leading up to and through World War II.